Poetry

criminal / “should i feel like a criminal in this car”


by Almira Halkina (M27)
Summer 2023 Issue


should i feel like a criminal in this car
with this sunlight trapped in my hair
    i didn't deserve to be given a chance for happiness, not in the present times
biting down these concerns and chewing them into molecules,
yet they still proceed to overpopulate my body instead of disintegrating in it

i am not a foreigner in my house,
in my hometown,
i'm more than a foreigner but less than a part
of the setting where i was planted and nurtured
seeking to lose the smack in the air and the language i consume,
but it's produced autonomously in my unconscious territories
put together into the labeled bottles with unreadable instructions,
vibrantly flaming side effects and 'regretfully undiscovered reverse agent'

carts of them are exported into my
vision
sight
emotional palette
sharpness spectrum of my vocabulary

old passwords aren't compatible,
density of the pixels in the 3D model we call life is exponentiating like a
cancer tumor
hate culture
political ideology —
no collaborative efforts are enough in their hypocrisy
i'm not a hypocrite but am a criminal
for locking my eyelashes
for not sacrificing a sacrifice not worth it
for running down the field and neither falling underground nor being blown up
    for the mismatched probabilities